At 20:20 Beijing time on December 25, 2021, the Ariane 5 rocket carried the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at the Kourou Space Launch Center in French Guiana. The Webb telescope will fly for about a month to reach L2 point of Hepti Lagrange, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
As the "successor" to the famous Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Webb Space Telescope has high hopes for mankind – "it is the largest, most complex, most powerful and most imaginative space telescope ever built by mankind". Since hubble's launch in 1990, the astronomical data it has observed and the scientific research it has produced have been massive and subversive. Before hubble lifted off, it was never imagined that a space telescope would refresh all of humanity's understanding of the universe for decades.
Through the Hubble telescope, researchers have observed the "infancy" galaxy that is only 400 million years old, and explored the law of the birth of the universe; ordinary people feel the smallness of the earth in the vast universe through the magnificent and colorful cosmic galaxy photos taken by the Hubble telescope, which stimulates the awe of deep space and the interest in astronomy. However, hubble infrared band observation is very limited, to explore the origin of the universe, the need to observe the infrared band, and high definition of the telescope, Webb telescope came into being. So for the most powerful Weber telescope in history, people are looking forward to whether it can help us glimpse the ultimate mystery of the universe: who we are? Where did it come from? Where to go?
Human beings are just atoms made up of a bunch of particles, and in the cosmic world, they are just a tiny grain of dust. Because it is too small, human beings have never stopped fantasizing about the vast universe, and the space telescope is the best tool for human exploration of the universe. The fantasy of the universe is actually related to the future destiny of human society. In addition to the scientific community, for decades, literature, film, fine arts and other industries have been asking questions about the universe in their own way.
Therefore, although the Weber telescope has encountered various technical problems and financial problems since the project was established in 1996, the project has never died. Twenty countries have invested more than $10 billion over 25 years, and human investment in the Webb telescope is rare. As Cicero said, if a person can meditate on the things of heaven, then when he faces the things of the world, his words and thoughts will be more noble.
After the Launch of the Weber Telescope, it does not represent the final victory of this exploration. About 13 days after launch, the Webb telescope will be fully deployed and deployed in orbit. Subsequently, the overall commissioning period will take at least 6 months. During this time, the Webb telescope may still encounter various problems. Hubble has been in orbit for more than 30 years and has been repaired and upgraded by astronauts many times, but the Weber telescope is 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, and the manned spacecraft cannot reach, and if it has problems that cannot be solved remotely, it may also mean that the huge efforts of all mankind for decades will be wasted.
Whatever the outcome, it was all worth it. Human development cannot stop moving forward, and to understand the natural laws of human development, we should use the rapid progress of science and technology to understand the universe in which the earth is located. Human understanding of the universe is to understand human beings themselves, and the deepening of the understanding of the universe is not only to expand the understanding of the material world, but also to affect the spiritual world of human beings, which is more helpful to the development of human society.
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Source: Bright Times Review
Editor-in-charge: Wang Yuanfang
Editor: Zhang Yongqun Xing Yanyan